NOGALES – After a whirlwind 48 hours during which she was detained,
deported and taken to a migrant shelter in Mexico, Guadalupe Garcia de
Rayos was temporarily reunited with her children.

The Mesa mother, one of the first undocumented immigrants to be
deported under President Donald Trump’s executive order, was thrust into
the national spotlight when protestors gathered outside the Immigration
and Customs Enforcement facility in Phoenix.

Garcia de Rayos, 35, was detained by ICE agents during a routine
appointment on Wednesday and deported to Mexico Thursday morning.
Speaking at a soup kitchen in Nogales, she said she has no regrets about
coming to the U.S. or going to her ICE appointment to check in as
required.

“I came here (to the U.S.) for my kids, a better future (for them),
to work for them, and I don’t regret it because I did it with love for
them,” Garcia said in Spanish an an impromptu press conference.

Garcia arrived in the the United States when she was 14 years old.
She was arrested during a workplace raid at a waterpark in 2008 and
convicted of criminal impersonation for using a fake social security
number.

After spending three months in the Maricopa County Jail and three
months in the Florence Detention Center, she received an Order of
Supervision and was allowed to return to her family in Mesa. She checked
in regularly with immigration officials for eight years as a condition
of her release until last week when she was deported.

“No teenager should ever have to go through this,” said Angel Rayos,
16. “It’s a nightmare having your mother taken away from you. The person
who’s always there for you, gone. Seeing her get taken away in a bunch
of vans like she was like a huge criminal. It’s just the worst thing.”

“We don’t deserve to go through this. No family should deserve to go
through this. Because really it’s heartbreaking. No one should feel this
pain, no one should go through this much suffering,” said Jacqueline
Rayos, Garcia’s 14-year-old daughter.

Rev. Sean Carroll, executive director of the Kino Border Initiative,
said he read about Garcia de Rayos’ situation Thursday morning and
shortly after, he heard she would be staying at the organization’s
shelter in Mexico.

“She’s working. She’s supporting her family,” Carroll said. “There’s
this assumption that immigration law works and I think what’s happened
to her is an example to us that our immigration system is broken. And we
really need are laws and policies that keep families together and
respect the dignity of the person.”

Under President Donald Trump’s executive order, undocumented
immigrants who have been convicted of a criminal offense are considered a
priority. In a statement released by ICE, the agency noted “relevant
databases indicate Ms. Garcia de Rayos has a prior felony conviction
dating from March 2009 for felony impersonation.”

Garcia said if former President Barack Obama was still in office, she
likely would not have been deported and would have continued to check
in with ICE officials while be allowed to stay with her U.S. citizen
children.

She and her family holds out hope they will be reunited on the Arizona side of the border.

Yes!

I want to help TucsonSentinel.com offer a real news alternative!

We're committed to making quality news accessible; we'll never set up a paywall or charge for our site. But we rely on your support to bring you independent news without the spin. Use our convenient PayPal/credit card donation form below or contact us at donate@tucsonsentinel.com today.